Trying to Remember the End of September. Saturday, Sept. 25th.

 Time is running out on 2021. Not really a bad thing; the year has been pretty shitty. But we need our nature, so we made our last September hike on Saturday the 25th. Being after Labor Day, we chose a spot in Bristol County that has become too human-filled due to camping and stuff and is thus out of our rotation now. But surely camping would be done by now! Well, it wasn't, but we went about our business undeterred.

The old picnic-table graveyard that was cleaned up a few years ago is making a comeback. That's a good sign. An even better sign was a Garter streaking out of my way and scaring a Pickerel Frog in the process. I didn't even have my lens-cap off yet. Then I flipped another Garter who outsmarted me. Finally, I flipped a gorgeous Milk and I just grabbed it to secure a photo.

Things were pretty light after that for a while, but we already considered it a successful nature walk. There were plenty of campers there, tents set up and stuff, but they were quiet and staying close to camp. That suited me just fine. The next thing we saw was a very disgruntled Fowler's Toad who had burrowed under a rock.

I wanted to scour the edges of the middle pond for new turtles but people were fishing and I didn't want to be a total asshole. We went to explore the other side of the spillway and saw a few Pickerel Frogs.

The fisher people departed and we went to look at the edges. We saw no baby turtles but these wee Bullfrogs were just about the smallest I've ever seen of this species. I've seen much larger Bullfrog tadpoles!

They both have goosebumps!

We walked around the pond, hoping to see some turtles. This Pickerel jumped out of the grass and into a beautiful position for a photo.

We finally saw a few Painted Turtles up basking. This pond used to be so good for Painters, Redbells and Musks but most seem to have moved on since the park decided that human activity was more important than animal habitat. These remaining guys seem content, though.

Walking along the edge, we saw some movement under a clump of something. It moved like a Snapper was under the clump. I took a picture and realized that the clump was a Snapper, with a Bullhead in his beak. Lunch time!

We've never seen that before!

Not far from there, we got our Garter Revenge when we spied this wee shoestring basking on a rock.

Not the easiest picture to get, but it came out OK.

From there, we headed back. It was a pretty long hike, but it took us past the old Picnic Table Graveyard again and, since it had been 3 or 4 hours, we decided to flip again. Score... I'm pretty sure this is the Garter that handed me my ass on the morning flip.

Another Garter... revenge was complete!

We walked the sandy path out of there, back towards the car. Looking down, we saw Andrea's very favorite sight... Snapling!!!

A very happy Andrea, kitted out in the proper attire.

We decided that, rather than have the wee one trod upon, we'd take it to a safe pond-edge. When we got there, we couldn't decide if it was a good spot or not... there was pooling, but some running water, too... decisions, decisions. But then we noticed a second Snapling was already enjoying that spot, so we deemed it worthy!

This is a shot of our guy's very first dip into the water. He swam to the bottom of the pool (about 8" deep) and buried himself in leaves until you could just see his tail.

Finally, right? Man, Andrea lives for Snaplings and some years, we just don't see them. This did us both a lot of good. Better still, we saw a couple of small Green Frogs in the bog on the way out.

Yeah, that place broke our hearts when it decided to refurbish that middle pond and make the whole place more hospitable for humans, but nature still finds a way to thrive and survive. As George Carlin once said, when all is said and done, Earth will shake off the humans like a bad case of fleas. Nature will prevail.

We enjoyed a rainbow for much of the way home. We noticed it right after I'd said "this here's rainbow weather."